Kwantung Army

The Kwantung Army
was
organized in 1919 from the Kwantung Garrison, itself organized in 1906 to guard the Kwantung Leased Territory and the concession along the South Manchurian Railroad to Changchun. A relatively small force during the 1920s, Kwantung Army became increasingly dominated by younger officers, such as Tsuji Masanobu, who perfected the art of gekokujo, "leading from below" or "loyal insubordination." Kwantung Army soon became a law unto itself. The staff of Kwantung Army arranged the
assassination of the Manchurian warlord, Chang Tso-lin, who was killed
by a bomb set off under his train on 4 June 1928. The same clique of
officers, led by Itagaki Seishiro and Ishiwara Kanji, subsequently engineered the Manchuria
Incident of
1931 and the subsequent establishment of Manchukuo as a Japanese puppet state. In January 1936, Kwantung
Army secretly backed an unsuccessful attempt by LCOL Tanaka
Ryukichi to invade Suiyuan province in northern China with a
pro-Japanese warlord army and set up a puppet regime.

Tojo Hideki was
head of
the Kempeitai
of the Kwantung Army from
1935 to 1937, where he made his reputation by effectively
transforming the Kempeitai into the arm of a police
state. During the Tokyo mutiny of
February 1936, which was largely the work of the Imperial Way Faction (Kōdōha), Tojo moved swiftly to
round up both soldiers and civilians in Manchuria who might be
sympathetic to the coup, though he told his wife privately that he was
moved by the tragedy that such men should be driven to rebellion.
Regarded by his superiors thereafter as a completely reliable and
apolitical soldier, Tojo was
then appointed chief of staff of the Kwantung
Army. Because the commander of Kwantung
Army also doubled as ambassador
to Manchukuo, the chief of staff ran most of the day to
day operations of Kwantung Army
and thus was unusually powerful.

Because the Japanese Army saw Russia as the traditional
enemy,
Kwantung
Army was kept very strong until mounting losses in the Pacific
forced
the
Japanese to draw reinforcements from Manchuria. Most of the important
Japanese Army officers had
served with Kwantung Army at
one time
or
another. Kwantung Army even began mobilizing against Russia in
the spring of 1941 under the guise of "Kwantung Army Special Maneuvers".
However, Japan decided to strike south instead. Kwantung Army divisions were gradually reduced to peacetime strength (about 60% of wartime manpower)
from December 1942 to late 1943, then ordered to give up a third of
their battalions for cadre in February 1944. Later that year, twelve
divisions were pulled out of Manchuria, including every Type A division
in Kwantung Army, and six new divisions raised from rear area and reserve troops. Kwantung Army was a hollow shell by the time the
Russians entered the
war, in August 1945. It was quickly routed.

Kwantung Army
ran Manchuria as a
military fiefdom. The Army hoped to turn Manchuria into a second
Japanese homeland — the
Japanese equivalent of lebensraum — but the Army
had little grasp of
economics, judging from the ineffectiveness of the economic policies
adopted. The Army despised the zaibatsu, the Japanese industrial
cartels, which might have funded the industrialization of Manchuria.
Native Manchurians fared particularly poorly under these
policies; for
example,
the Army deliberately set up heroin dens as a
way to
weaken the native population and as a source of cash, even issuing 30
million yen in bonds in 1932 secured by opium profits.